Truvia Takes Bold Steps to Reduce Carbon Footprint

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The Truvia business announced that its Truvia calorie-free sweetener is the first stevia-based sweetener to be awarded Product Carbon Footprint certification.

The certification arm of the U.K.–based Carbon Trust has certified the total greenhouse gas emissions at every stage of the supply chain, including cultivation, processing, packaging, transport, use, and disposal.

The makers of Truvia sweetener worked with the Carbon Trust to certify its carbon footprint and verify its waste and water footprints throughout its supply chain. The certified metrics are part of an action plan to manage the carbon footprint of the Truvia stevia leaf extract, in order to become carbon neutral by 2020.

Since the baseline assessment was conducted in 2011, the business has already reduced the CO2–equivalent per metric ton of “sweet” by 35 percent during the second recorded period ending December 2012, resulting primarily from improvements made to the leaf-extraction process. These findings indicate the business is on track to deliver on its interim 2015 milestone goals.

"We're delighted to be taking this major step with the Carbon Trust,” says Mark Brooks, global consumer products director for the Truvia brand. “The certification is a visible reflection of the Truvia brand’s commitment to meeting our ambitious sustainability goals.”

Darran Messem, managing director of certification, the Carbon Trust, says: "We are excited to work with the Truvia business to help them to understand and reduce the carbon impacts of their sweetener product. The Truvia brand’s commitment to certify its product’s carbon footprint and reduce the carbon footprint is an important milestone.The Carbon Trust also recognized that carbon emissions are closely linked to water use and waste, so we are also working together to improve these areas.”

Under the certification, the Truvia business has signed up to use the carbon reduction label in the future. By displaying this label, which in this case covers U.K., U.S.A., Mexico, Spain, France, and Italy, the Truvia brand is committed to reducing the carbon footprint of its sweetener over a two-year period.

In 2010, the Truvia business made a number of sustainability pledges. Commitments include:

To reduce its carbon footprint by 50 percent in 2015 from a 2010 baseline to become carbon neutral in 2020;

To ensure all processed water is returned to the same quality in which it was taken and reduce net depletion by 25 percent by 2020; and

To reduce waste by 50 percent across the supply chain in 2015 in efforts to become zero waste by 2020.